Thursday, February 9, 2017

Woman had to have a live cockroach removed from her skull

If you've got any kind of distaste for small creepy crawlies, this story is probably about to give you nightmares. Because according to the Indian Express, a woman recently underwent a 12 hour surgery to have a live, crawling cockroach from her skull after she could feel it crawling about.

This is hideous.

The 42-year-old woman known as Selvi, from Chennai in India, reportedly felt a weird itching sensation around her nose and eyes, and so she asked her son-in-law to take her to the hospital for them to investigate.

"I could not explain the feeling but I was sure it was some insect. There was a tingling, crawling sensation. Whenever it moved, it gave me a burning sensation in my eyes. I spent the entire night in discomfort, sitting up and waiting for dawn to go to Stanley hospital after getting the reference of a doctor from my employer," she's reported to have said.

After a nasal endoscopy doctors identified the cockroach sitting on her skull, right in between the patient's eyes. It had apparently lodged itself there after having crawled up her nostrils while she was sleeping. And on that note, you'll never catch me sleeping again without some kind of nostril-mask while visiting countries where cockroaches live and breathe.

"This is the first such case I have seen in my three decades of practice," Dr M N Shankar, who's head of the ear, nose and throat department at the hospital where Selvi was treated, told the Indian Express.

And apparently this isn't just a weird, gross incident you'd rather never happened to you; it could actually have been life-threatening for Selvi. If the cockroach had remained in her skull any longer and died, it reportedly could have caused her brain damage following the spread of infection.

So she had a pretty lucky escape, then. Have fun trying to enjoy your lunch now.